Taking Stock: February

Time to sum up my second month of being vegan. It's been a short month with its share of long posts, so I'll make this one brief.

Over the course of the month, I ran for 12 hours, snowshoed for 4 hours, rode for 5.5 hours and swam for 2 hours (riding and swimming really suffered due to the extended Rome trip). I caught a slight cold in a psychosomatic protest at returning to Switzerland, and I have a bruised right hip from an icy bike slip, which has subsequently turned all the colours of the rainbow (a bit like watching a display of the northern lights in slow-mo). I've been tinged with some winter melancholy that I go through every February, but in spite of that, my energy levels have been excellent. I'm noticing the total absence of muscular tiredness or stiffness between workouts. It's early days, and my longest run was only 2 hours, but I don't believe I've ever experienced such excellent recovery. Time, and harder workouts, will tell. My weight has remained consistent, and I'm blaming the pizza, wine and the discovery that drinking black coffee and eating dark chocolate makes me feel so chic for the lack of weight loss with increased training volume. Besides, I'm quite sure that the extra cushioning protected my hip from worse damage on the ice.

Now to recipe of the month. I've done a little less experimentation in the kitchen this month, mostly becasue I was eating vegan pizza in sunny piazzas for a good portion of it. But I was particularity inspired by a non-Italian dish in one Roman restaurant: babaganoush. Besides being delicious and easy to make, the name of the dish is so much fun to say out loud: babaganoush. Babaganoush can be made with yogurt, but it can certainly be made without, as this restaurant did. They kindly told me their recipe, which I promptly forgot the details of after my second glass of wine. Fortunately, there are plenty of online recipes. I like this one (adapted from The Victory Garden Cookbook):

1/2 lb eggplant (or aubergine, for the Brits)
3 tb lemon juice
1 ts salt
2 ts minced fresh garlic
3 tb sesame tahini
1/4 c chopped parsley
1/2 c toasted pine nuts
2 tb olive oil

Preheat oven to 400F. Prick eggplant all over with a fork. Bake whole until tender (about 30 minutes). Remove from oven, halve and scoop out the flesh. Blend in a food processor with the lemon juice until smooth. Mash the salt and garlic together and combine with the eggplant, along with the tahini. Cool and stir in the parsley and pine nuts. Before serving, drizzle with the olive oil. Serve as a dip with tortilla chips or triangles of pita bread.

And there rests February. I made it through another.

How to Kill a Craving, Part II

To preface today’s post, I want to reiterate what I mentioned at the close of my previous to last post. When I turn to the internet to educate myself on a topic, I do what I can to vet out claims that are backed by a particular industry lobby (of particular relevance to this topic is the soy lobby, who are not the granola-eating, Birkenstock-wearing ensemble of yogis one might suppose them to be) or worse, plain bad science. I usually look for a) what research was conducted to back the claim being made and b) who sponsored that research. If a particular claim references research that was published in a peer-reviewed journal, all the better, however this is rarely the case and it’s otherwise frustrating when evidence is given that may have good merit, but the writer has failed to cite his or her sources. So what follows are my conclusions from a review conducted under these criteria, and my references point to the original source of the data wherever possible. As a reminder, this whole review was sparked by a particularly sudden and unexpected cheese craving in a train station (see previous post)

Having led with that footnote, let’s go back to the beginning. When, exactly, did we decide it was a good idea to drink the milk of another mammal? None of the other animals are doing it. It's actually a relatively recent occurrence in the history of man: somewhere around 10,000 and 6,000 years ago there was a switch from hunting goats and cattle for their meat to domesticating them for their meat and milk (1). It’s important to note that only the Western world started and continues this practice. The majority of the world’s population has a dairy-free diet, and this becomes important later on when we look at why non-milk consuming countries have the best bone strength (which I’m interested in as an athlete).

The agricultural revolution brought dairy farming along in leaps and bounds. By the 1940's, we’d developed various ways to make a cow produce an average of 3,000 litres of milk per year, which is about 5 times the amount that a calf would normally drink (2). These days, we achieve over 6,300 litres per cow per year (3). These impressive gains in milk yields have been achieved through a number of methods, which are only relevant to my topic here in as much as they are relevant to what ends up in our milk as a result.

So bear with me as I run through the life cycle of a modern dairy cow; it really is worth it in terms of getting to the bottom of things. And the punch line at the end is highly rewarding, I promise.

Within hours after giving birth, the dairy cow's calf is taken from her. Male calves are sold for pet food or become veal (since dairy cows are bred for intensive milk production, the little-boy calves are a sort of unwanted by-product). The female calves are sequestered until they are old enough to be artificially inseminated to begin milk production (a cow must obviously first become pregnant and have a calf in order to produce milk). From that point on, she will be milked for 10 months out of the year, including seven months of each of her consecutive nine-month pregnancies (4). This practice of milking pregnant cows will become important later on – stay with me.

Once she begins her milk production, the dairy cow is treated with a number of hormones to further increase her yield. She is also fed a high-protein diet that contains nothing that she would naturally eat (grass is so passé for dairy cows). When it recently became apparent that turning natural herbivores into carnivores and, later, cannibals, was not very well thought-out (think BSE), most countries have switched to feeding genetically-modified soy and fish meal to dairy cows to keep the high-protein diet up.

Back to the hormones though. We’ve all heard that there are artificial hormones in our milk, so I’m not going to get into the details of which ones and in what amounts. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot. The most controversial, Bovine Somatotrophin (BST), has endless studies linking it to girls starting puberty at younger and younger ages (the average age is now 11 in North America – and there are plenty of cases of girls developing breasts at 9 and 10 years old (5). This makes some intuitive sense to me, since these are hormones designed to stimulate the mammary glands. (Sidenote to those of us in Europe and Canada: while BST milk has been banned in our countries, the ban does not apply to imports of dairy products, e.g. ice cream, from BST-legal countries such as the US).

All of this high-intensity milk production is bound to cause some stresses on the cow’s health, so a medley of antibiotics, the most common being penicillin, are used to treat the various illnesses related to this, pardon the pun, labour-intensive life. One of the most common afflictions for a dairy cow relates to the actual milking process. Being milked two to three times a day, seven days a week, by an electric milking machine tends to result in mastitis, an inflammation of the udders that causes them to become hot and hard and produce an abnormal discharge. Some 35-40 incidences of mastitis are found per 100 cows (6). Antibiotics are injected directly into the udder to reduce the swelling of mastitis, but that doesn’t stop the abnormal discharge. So certain amounts of these antibiotics are not the only thing to end up in our milk – avert your eyes from the rest of this sentence if you have a sensitive stomach – the presence of puss in our milk is completely normal and legal (7). This point becomes important later on, when we look at why it’s become necessary to heat our milk to very high temperatures (pasteurization) to kill, amongst other things, the bacteria in the puss.

(Another side note: this for those who chose organic milk in an effort to avoid the artificial hormones and antibiotics, as I used to. The organic dairy cow is still subject to the cycle of artificial insemination and continual intensive milk production, and because they are not given medication to treat the various associated stresses...yes, you guessed it, sick cows are being milked. The extent of this varies widely from organic dairy farm to organic dairy farm, but you can bet there is some serious puss in organic milk, not to mention the absence of pain relief for the cow suffering from mastitis, lameness and various systemic infections (8)).

Back to the life cycle: a dairy cow lives for an average of four years; under natural conditions, she might live up to 25 years (9) (so that hyperbole about dairy cows literally being ‘milked to death’? It’s perhaps not as far from the mark as I’d assumed). At the end of four years, her milk production begins to decline and she is transported to her final destination - the slaughterhouse. Interestingly, about 40% of America's hamburger is made from "spent" dairy cows.

Besides the presence of hormones and antibiotics in our milk, there is a little bit of an issue that arises from us drinking the milk of cows that are perpetually pregnant. I think this is where my doctor’s acne link might come into play. Various natural hormones are produced during pregnancy (mostly dihydrotestosterone, DHT, precursors) that stimulate the growth of skin cells and signal the skin cells to produce more sebum. These, in addition to the cow’s other growth-stimulating hormones that are there because a baby cow requires them for growth and development, and you might just have an acne-causing cocktail (10). Incidentally, these same growth-stimulating hormones, which are entirely natural and appropriate for turning a baby calf into a 1000-pound steer, are a little less appropriate for adult humans and are known to cause excessive cell growth by another name: cancer (11). (There is so much research on this that I don’t even know what to reference – just google dairy and any kind of human cancer, in particular breast cancer, for rather obvious reasons)

So now we are done with the cow, and we are close to the punchline, I promise. If you’ve stayed with me this far, then you deserve to know what good nutrients are in a glass of cold milk. The ones I had always had in mind, especially as an athlete, were protein and calcium. But before we look at that, we have to talk about pasteurization - try and stay with me.

Pasteurization, the heating of milk to very high temperatures, kills harmful microorganisms that may be living in the milk (remember the puss). Cooking the milk at high temperatures, unfortunately, also destroys all of the enzymes (this is actually the test for successful pasteurization) including lactase, contributing to lactose-intolerance. It also either destroys or alters the chemical structure of the naturally-occurring vitamins so that many are no longer bioavailable. So all that calcium that is packed in a glass of cold milk? We can’t ingest much of it (12).

This again makes some intuitive sense: North America has one of the highest consumptions of dairy products, and also the highest rate of osteoporosis. There is actually evidence (way too complicated to go into here) that consuming diary products causes the loss of calcium from our bodies. Worldwide, the lowest rates of osteoporosis are found in the populations that consume little or no dairy at all. For example, the women of the Bantus tribe in South Africa exist on a laregly plant-based diet and consume about 200 to 350 mg of calcium a day, about half of western women's intake. The women have virtually no osteoporosis despite bearing six or more children and nursing them for prolonged periods (13). When African women immigrate to the United States, do they develop osteoporosis? The answer is yes. Similarly, osteoporosis incidence in female Asians is much lower than in Asian females living in the USA (14), so it's not something in the genes of Westerners that makes us more susceptible to brittle bones, it's something else that we're doing.

But here's where it gets even more interesting for athletes: it seems that pasteurization might just kill something else that we think we are getting in milk. Things get muddy here, because there are many different pasteurization techniques and temperatures used, and the laws vary from country to country. Milk protein consists of two major proteins: casein and whey. As far as I can tell, there is decent evidence that both whey and casein start to denture when exposed to temperatures over 72C (15, 16). Most pasteurization techniques now cook milk at temperatures over 75C, not least of all over growing fears about the paratuberculosis virus, which is linked to Crohn's Disease (17). The dairy industry firmly states otherwise, but non-dairy-sponsored research suggests that the proteins in modern pasteurized milk are in varying denatured states.

If you're tired of reading this ridiculously long post, you might have just missed the punchline, so I'll spell it out. If the vitamins and minerals in milk are no longer in bioavailable form, and the proteins have been denatured, then what we are left with is a rather bizarre cocktail of artificial and natural cow hormones, antibiotics, saturated fat and some carbohydrate.

I think that did it, my cheese craving seems to have passed.

1. http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/741074.html
2. Epstein, S. S. Potential public health hazards of biosynthetic milk hormones. International Journal of Health Services, 20:73-84, 1990.
3. FAWC, 1997. Report on the Welfare of Dairy Cattle. Farm Animal Welfare Council. Surbiton: Surrey
4. MAFF, 2001. Welfare of Calves. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food.
5. Stoll BA. Western diet, early puberty and breast cancer risk. Breast Cancer Res Treat (England) Jun 1998;49(3):187-93.
6. FAWC, 1997. Report on the Welfare of Dairy Cattle. Farm Animal Welfare Council. Surbiton: Surrey
7. http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/ansci/dairy/as1131w.htm
8. www.organicconsumers.org
9. Winter, M., Fry, C. and Carruthers, P., 1997. Farm animal Welfare and the Common Agricultural Policy in Europe. Compassion in World Farming Trust. Petersfield: Hampshire
10. Holmes et al. Dietary Correlates of Plasma Insulin-like Growth Factor I and Insulin-like Growth Factor Binding Protein 3 Concentrations, Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention Vol. 11, 852-861, September 2002
11. Outwater JL, et al. Dairy products and breast cancer: the IGF-I, estrogen and bGH hypothesis. Med Hypotheses Jun 1997;48(6):453-61
12. Lanou, A. Pediatrics, March 2005; vol 115: pp 736-743.
13. Walker, A., Osteoporosis and Calcium Deficiency, Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 1965 / 16 / 327.
14. Memon, A. et al, Incidence of hip fracture in Kuwait. Int.J.Epidemiol.1998 / 5 / 860-865.
15. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T7C-4CHRJ1H-4&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=5b9ccebebefce3d241edf7a1df846e7e
16. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119136566/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
17. Collins MT. "M paratuberculosis in Foods and the Public Health Implications." Proceedings of the Fufth International Colloquium on Paratuberculosis, Chiodini RK, Hines ME, and MT Collins (Eds.) Madison, WI: International Association for Paratuberculosis, 1996:352

Vegan Shriving

I'm taking a break from the arduousness of trying to find The Truth in internet information to share about my pancake breakfast.

It's Shrove Tuesday today. Not being entirely familiar with the historical significance of Shrove Tuesday (beyond it being as good a reason as any to eat pancakes), I turned to Wikipedia and was delighted to find that shrove is the past tense of the English verb shrive, which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by way of confession and doing penance. For practicing Christians, the idea is to get yourself absolved before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. Fabulous! What better way to obtain final absolution from my egg incident in Rome than to make egg-free pancakes.

And what is the significance of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday?

"Pancakes and doughnuts are associated with the day preceding Lent because they were a way to use up rich foodstuffs such as eggs, milk, and sugar, before the fasting season of the 40 days of Lent. The liturgical fasting emphasized eating plainer food and refraining from food that would give pleasure: in many cultures, this means no meat, dairy, or eggs."

Aha. So, since we practicing vegans are in a state of permanently denied pleasure and are thus one step ahead of the game, Shrove Tuesday really is just a good reason to eat pancakes.

I fished around online until I found a recipe that I had all the ingredients for, and with much fanfare in the kitchen at 6am this morning, made a batch of truly beautiful vegan pancakes. With the right amount of banging pots and use of the high-speed setting on the blender, I successfully woke Michael up and we shared pancakes and coffee together as the sun came up on a beautiful day.

The recipe:

• 1 cup flour (I used buckwheat)
• 1T baking powder
• 1/4t salt
• 1 cup water (soymilk if you want, but I just used water)
• 1/2t oil
• 1/2t maple syrup

Mix it all together. Pour 1/4 cup at a time into the pan on medium heat. When it is bubbling and dry on the edges flip over and brown the other side. Smother in maple syrup and eat with loved ones before heading out for a 10km run and a 2km swim.

Since I've reproduced the recipe here, it is not a candidate for February's recipe of the month (that's a rule I just made up, of course), but I wanted to include it in today's posting in case any readers on the other side of the Atlantic are waking up and feel inspired to start their Lent a day early, without missing the fun of pancake-making. You closet vegans know who you are.

How to Kill a Craving Using Google

I was sideswiped by a cheese craving this morning, when passing between platforms at Geneva train station. I’ve never been a big cheese buff, but a sudden and unexpected longing came over me when I caught sight of a beautifully assembled tomato and bocconcini sandwich in the window of the sandwich kiosk. Alternating wedges of fresh white cheese slices and brilliant red tomatoes were peeping out from the edge of a rustic ciabatta bun. I approached the window and stopped just short of pressing my hands and face to the glass with wide-eyed wistfulness.

The spell was broken an instant later when I was distracted by the cover of Gala magazine in the neighbouring kiosk, which featured Obama and his daughters in a three-way embrace and carried the intriguing title ‘Le SuperDaddy à la Maison-Blanche’ (strong words of praise indeed from the French). Sometimes a short attention span is truly a blessing, but the experience gave me cause to return home and conduct some research into the downside of dairy; I figured it would be helpful to have some mental ammo should this sort of situation arise in the future.

I seem to have inoculated myself against meat cravings using a similar methodology: having reviewed a critical mass of disturbing facts about modern meat consumption - on both our bodies and the environment - I haven’t had a single meat craving. In fact, I am even contemplating whether I will reintroduce meat at the end of this experimental year (and I am not suggesting that we are designed as herbivores, although there are some good arguments in support of this hypothesis. I remain agnostic on this point until there is a critical mass of research into the basis for either side of the argument. I am simply saying that I find the evidence against consuming the meat we find on our supermarket shelves today compelling enough to give thought to calling it quits, permanently).

So, I came home and took to my keyboard with the intention of quashing my outstanding cravings for dairy products, with a little help from Google. I figured some word combos such as ‘lactose and bad effects’, ‘dairy and health concerns’, ‘milk products and athletic performance’ and (remembering something my GP told me when I was a anxious adolescent searching for answers) ‘chocolate and acne’, should do it.

I got more than I bargained for.

The plethora of information on this subject is overwhelming. I am going to have to set aside some time to wade through the junk science, data-less assumptions and emotionally-driven hyperbole about how cows are literally ‘milked to death’ to provide us with a drink that was never intended for us, but was intended for the young of their own species, giving us a whole host of health complications and providing few of the nutrients that we have been raised to believe it does (the latter is of particular interest to me as an athlete). It would be too easy to read some claims about the link between dairy and just about every major disease of our time, then look at some pictures of cows with udders that are swollen to four times their natural size from artificial hormone treatment, distended to a point where they cannot stand up, and conclude that milk is bad, bad bad. I’m more interested in finding out what studies have been done in this area, who sponsored that research, have the results been reviewed by peers in the scientific community, and can we therefore draw some meaningful conclusions.

So, once I have sifted out the credible data and turned it into a digestible (no pun intended) piece of writing, I will pick up where I leave off here. For now, suffice it to say that my reading so far has killed my cheese craving, possibly for good.

Back on the Bike, and Abruptly off Again

My sniffles have progressed into a throaty cough, but I otherwise feel physically good. In defiance of my malaise, the three feet of snow on the ground, and two days of moping around the house, I pulled out my mountain bike at day break. Plus, the empty fridge was giving rise to another concern: what was I going to have for lunch today?

So I headed out with my backpack to get an hour ride in and pick up some vegetables from a vente direct (buy direct) farm on the way home (Francois told me about this place and it's a literal God-send. While the vegetables are no more affordable than the supermarket, they are much fresher and they even have celery, a very elusive vegetable in Switzerland. Francois, have I thanked you enough for telling me about this place?) The ride went well until, about two kilometers from home, I skidded out on black ice and the vegetables and I hit the road hard. After an inital few seconds of lying on the ground, wondering how serious this is, I got up and assessed the damage to the vegetables, my bike, and me (in that order). My bike took the worst of it, and my shifting has an unidentifeid probelm that I will sum up with a diagnosis of 'not working' when Michael asks me to be specific about what's wrong later tonight, and I - luckily - have nothing more than some bruising. It was nevertheless a long two kilometre walk home.

So now I have a bruised right hip, some bruised vegetables (on the lunch menu now: soup) and something new to mope about. I have no idea how I'm going to carry out Ironman training over the next two months with conditions like this. My schedule calls for a 1.5 hour run later today (fat chance) and a 3-hour ride tomorrow. I would kill for a gym membership right now and am considering biting the bullet and paying for some drop-in sessions to get my through to spring. I will hand over my credit card and ask them not to tell me what the session costs, otherwise I can see myself waking up in the morning and thinking: do I eat today, or workout today?

Ah, the dilemmas of life in Switzerland.

All Good Things

I knew that I couldn't stay in Rome forever, but I was trying. With both money and clean underwear running out, my days were numbered. And so, after one final slice of vegan pizza yesterday, I (very grudgingly) dragged my wheely case to Termini station and boarded the train for Lausanne.

The beauty of the Tuscan countryside gliding by the train window helped to defray some of the sadness at leaving a city that captured my heart. So much has been written about Rome that I am not going to even attempt to do it any sort of literary justice here (I am, after all, supposed to be talking about being a vegan Ironman-in-training, although I have talked about vegan pizza more than once, right?) So here's my final muse on the eternal city:

They say that you can feel the presence of the dead in Rome, and when I ran along the banks of the Tiber I thought about how the waters ran red with bloodshed more than once in the city's history. How can a city where the past is so present still teem with life and passion in a unabashedly modern way? How can a city exude chaos the moment you step onto it's streets, but never fail to communicate a sense of harmony and equilibrium as you walk through them? This ability to be concurrently vibrant and somber, unruly and majestic, ancient and alive, is something I have never experienced in a place before. Either Rome is special, or I have some more traveling to do.

I developed a cold on the journey home (a psychosomatic response to returning to Switzerland, I'm sure), and have woken to a white landscape under grey skies this morning. I went for a 30-minute run on icy roads, taking itty-bitty steps to avoid slipping. My energy levels are excellent and I long to do more, but I don't want my current low-grade sniffles to develop into anything more. So I plan to stay home and mope for the rest of today, and perhaps tomorrow.

I miss my vegan pizza.

More Confessions

If I didn't have anything serious to confess to in my last post, I do in this one.

I think I might have eaten egg this morning. In fact, I am almost positive I did. And the worst part is...I suspected there was some egg contamination after my first bite of the breakfast item in question, and I ate it anyway.

It happened like this: I got up for an early morning visit to Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the four major basilicas in Rome (yes, I'm still here). Even though tourists are delightfully thin on the ground in Rome right now, the major basilicas still manage to draw a critical mass of camera-snapping, backpack-wielding day trippers that make one's experience of a church less...churchy. So my plan was to give myself a quiet hour at Santa Maria at sunrise, and then find somewhere closeby for breakfast.

My planning paid off, and it was just the nuns and I who enjoyed the silence of the dimly lit Borghese chapel, their heads bowed in prayer and mine staring upwards at the 16-century coffered ceiling that is said to be gilded with Inca gold.

I was hungry when I exited into the Piazza dell'Esquilino, and (I should have foreseen this) was in no mood to vet out cafes for both good coffee and vegan-friendly breakfast. Good coffee was the number one priority, and I would have settled for an uninteresting panne of some sort to buffer my stomach until a market could be found. After trying three cafes and finding each to be lacking on one of these fronts, I found an establishment on the far side of the piazza, with a view back over Santa Maria's medieval bell tower. The coffee smelt good and there seemed to be an interesting selection of baked fruit things in the display fridge. I've mastered how to confirm that a pie or torte crust does not contain butter in Italian (senza burro, si?) and so I picked out what looked like an innocent apple and nut torte and ordered my coffee.

One bite later, and a faint alarm bell started ringing in a distant chamber of my mind. It hadn't occurred to me to check whether the filling had egg in it, and I could taste something that was faintly eggy. But I was hungry and undercaffeinated, and whether an egg was involved in the making of my overpriced slice of torte seemed like splitting hairs at that moment. And besides, I wasn't about to spit into a napkin in an upscale Roman cafe. So I swallowed my first bite, and having effectively crossed the Rubicon, I snuffed out the alarm bell, finished my torte and drank my coffee in a state of blissful denial.

The denial proved to have a limited shelf-life, and it was replaced by the inevitable weight of remorse in short order. I called to mind the lineup of confession boxes that I had just walked past in the main hall of Santa Maria's: I noted how some of the little red 'in-use' lights were on and I had thought to myself how pleasant it was that people confess their sins at such an early hour. Now I had something more serious to purge, and it wasn't even 9am. Would it matter that I have not been christened a Catholic? Would the gaping void in my Italian vocabulary for fessing up to sins leave me in a greater state of distress than I was currently feeling, staring at my empty coffee cup and plate like it was a crime scene, and I was the only suspect?

A cloud of shame followed me back to the hotel. After a morning of mental self-flagellation, I eventually settled on my own brand of repentance. Hence, today's post. I'm certain that if I can confess my sin to the public, I can resolve to forgive myself and move on. And I will run an extra set of intervals on the Spanish Steps tonight for good moral measure. I'm considering it my offering of Hail Mary's.

Confessions of a Bad Blogger in Rome

The title of this post makes it sound like it's going to be more juicy than it actually is. I'm sorry to disappoint, but my confession is a little more modest than what others might confess to in Rome; the guilt that is following me around these ancient streets relates to being a complacent blogger of late. I'm pleading lack of public wifi as my official reason: thanks to an antiterror law that was past in Italy last year, it's virtually impossible to find public wifi spots here. If I wanted to open an internet cafe in Rome, I would need to shell out for a public communications business license, purchase some rather expensive tracking software, and photocopy the passports of my clientele as they arrive at the door. And I thought the Swiss were paranoid.

But I do have internet access in my hotel, so I can't plead 'no public wifi' as my only excuse. Truth be told, I'm much more interested in being out and about in Rome than sitting in my hotel room, writing about it. I feel like a bad vegan blogger. To alleviate my guilt, here's a check-in on my average daily protein consumption.

Yesterday's major protein sources:

20 hazelnuts (from a market stall) - 4g protein
1 cup chickpeas (in a dip) - 11g protein
1 cup baba ganoush (with the chickpea dip) - 10g protein
30 pumpkin seeds (on a salad) - 8g protein
1 bowl seven bean soup (self explanatory, really) - 12g protein

I'd call this borderline low. Fortunately, I have some travel pouches of Vega with me for such low-protein emergencies. I'll have one tonight before bed; right after my fourth glass of vino rosso. At least my training in Rome is fairing better than both my blogging and protein consumption (providing we don't talk about swimming and biking, that is). I'm pleased to say that running is featuring daily, and continues to feel really good. Running around the Colosseum, running along the Tiber, running past the Trevi fountain, up to the Vatican, down the Spanish steps...

Why am I sitting in my hotel, writing about this, again?

In Good Company in Rome

I didn't run the Spanish Steps this morning, but I did run around the walls of the Vatican thinking that I could mark off one of the seven hills as 'done', only to later find out that it is the eighth hill.

I have recruited company for the remainder of my stay in the eternal city: my mother has flown down from a frosty Scotland to explore the markets and make faces at restaurant menus with me. As a long time dairy and gluten allergy sufferer, we make an interesting dining-out team. And as a self professed fan of my blog (having embraced the world of blogging with a remarkable insouciance), she has been extremely eager to make her cameo appearance here; persistently inquiring after when she will be 'blogged about' and giving helpful input, all day long, as to what should be included in the day's account.

So the following has nothing to do with either Ironman training or plant-based diets, but has everything to do with what happens when a dietaryily-handicapped mother-daughter pair set loose on Rome. Mum, please do let me know if there are any errors or omissions.

In advance of my company's arrival, I relocated from my hotel near Porta Pia to a self-catering apartment on a quiet street just outside the Vatican walls. The idea was that, if necessary, we could retreat to cook our own meals (I had visions of sitting down in a pizzeria and ordering like this: "Hi. I'll have the four seasons with no cheese and no meat, please, and my mother here will have the ham and pineapple with no crust"). It has actually worked out that, with the exception of breakfast (we start our day with a slice of gluten-free bread spread with fig jam from a local market and black tea which we make in a billy-can, for want of a kettle), there has been no need to rough it with our own food prep facilities. When not eating our way around markets (I focus on the nut stalls for protein, Mum focuses on anything that has polenta as an alternative to flour, and we both focus on the olives) we have been dining in the buffet-style eateries that can be found in just about any neighbourhood. These are the places where the working Romans go for lunch everyday, and so would I if I lived here: the food is homemade, inexpensive, and there are no surprises. It's like picture-menu food: there's no need to use your imagination when ordering. There are also staff on hand to pepper with questions about any dishes that are ambiguous in appearance ('but what are the tomatoes stuffed with?', 'but what is the artichoke battered in?').

Yesterday's lunchtime find was a particular gem. In a lane somewhere north of the Spanish steps, we walked past an art gallery-cum-restaurant. I didn't even stop to look at the menu, sure that it was not going to be in our loosely-defined budget range. But my less-presumptive mother did, proving that it doesn't pay to make assumptions. The restaurant, which was 'proudly vegetarian since 1979', had an entire menu section entitled Vegano. Let me repeat: a vegetarian art gallery restaurant, in Rome, with a section of the menu devoted to vegan food. When we pushed the heavy door open, I was expecting to enter an establishment where the 'alternative' lifestyle Romans (who I have yet to spot) were dining, but instead we found a crowd of well-heeled twenty-somethings, middle-aged well-to-doers and business luncheons in full force. Much more Gucci than tie-die. While the art wasn't quite to our liking (and you can view it on their website), the food was unbelievably good, and the total cost of our meal for two was less than a gallery visit.

Besides eating, shopping but not buying, talking over coffees in various piazzas when the sun is out and, ducking into churches when the heavens have opened, we've done our share of walking. By the end of yesterday, it appeared that I had pushed the limits of the generational gap on this front. Mum's legs were done, and the first signs of blisters were threatening to bring an abrupt end to all bipedal mobility. Since we're the same shoe size, we came up with the solution of fitting her in my running shoes (for those who care about these things, I wear the Mizuno Wave Creation). Having not been in a pair of runners since the early 80's, and then they were strictly gardening footwear, her first few steps on the ultra-responsive midsole were a little unsteady. She looked like she might tip forward which each springy step. But her stride quickly adjusted, and we headed up to the Vatican with at least a 20% increase in our ambling speed. She positively sprung around the marble basilica floor of St Peter's, exclaiming 'zoom zoom!' whenever moving from standing to a walking motion.

There are some things for which genetics offers no explanation.

My Unexpected Vegan Roots

While I don't plan to turn this blog into another food-and-travel blog, dinner last night simply has to be scribed.

Having eaten enough pizza to feed a small Roman legion over the last two days, I decided to switch it up and hunt down a pasta place. I was wandering, maplessly, somewhere near Piazza Navona, looking for the trattoria with the least signage and fanfare outside, and no menus with English translation posted by the door (general clues of authenticity in a moderately touristy area). I found a place in a side lane, which I will probably never be able to find again, somewhere in the web of streets east of the square. Hidden behind some potted shrubbery and underneath some overzealous vines that had succeeded in swallowing the facade, I found a narrow doorway that opened into a single-roomed restaurant that bordered on being dimly lit. I later find out that the restaurant is called Osteria della Luppa. Seated at a blue and white checkered table laid with heavy glassware and cutlery, I proceeded to study the menu.

First stroke of luck: although no English menu translations were posted outside, the menu handed to me did offer some (very rough) English descriptions of the dishes.

Second stroke of luck: there are so many meat and cheese-free options, I actually develop a mild anxiety over what to choose.

The third stroke of luck is a little more esoteric: I notice that the inside cover of the menu has a small paragraph on the history of the restaurant. In very bad English, the translation claims (with references) that the contentious painter Caravaggio used to lunch in the very room I am sitting. The significance of this little piece of trivia lies in the book I'm reading. When possible, I like to read a book that is set in the place I am visiting. As a moody teenager, I read Hemingway by flashlight after lights-out in youth hostels across Spain, Gerald Durrell during a rainy week in the South of England, and have read and re-read Douglas Coupland at different times over the last eight years of life in Vancouver. My current read, The Other Side of You, by Sally Vickars (while I do not plan to turn this into a book blog either, I do highly recommend reading Sally Vickars) is partially set in Rome and (if you've stuck with me, here's the significant part) it contains a major Caravaggio theme. The book has left me so intrigued by his work, I have added "see every Caravaggio in Rome" to an already impossible to-do list. Needless to say, I was positively hopping in my restaurant chair at this point.

Over the course of the next two hours, I consumed a mixed vegetable antipasto platter, a plate of porcini mushroom fettuccine in a tomato sauce, a basket of ciabatta bread, a fruit platter, half a liter of wine, and three chapters of my book. The only fly in the ointment was a light dusting of Parmesan on my fettuccine when it arrived at the table (despite my repetition of senza fromaggio). Not wanting to disturb a meal that was unfolding with an otherwise dream-like quality, I opted for a little damage-control: I scraped off the offending sprinkles, strand by fettuccine strand. If the server noticed the results of my nimble work at the edge of the plate when she cleared it, she didn't let on.

It was getting dark when I made my way back out through the overgrown entrance, and I took a route that led past the Pantheon where, as if my day could not get any more choreographed, I looked up to see ominous clouds rolling in above the grave-looking dome. It felt like Zeus was getting angry. I ducked into a handy winebar as large drops began to fall, where I progressed through two more chapters of The Other Side of You, as well as two glasses of port, and scribbled the notes that would later form this passage before the details of dinner became dim in the imminent fog. As the rain came down outside, I got to thinking about my family's own secret pasta sauce recipe (which will absolutely not be reprinted here).

What I know of our family's secret recipe is this: it was born somewhere in the hills outside Naples, was made for my father by his grandmother in a third-floor apartment in the Bronx, was later taught to him by his favourite aunt, and has since been taught to both my brother and myself in a series of transatlantic emails to our respective temporary homes in Atlanta, Georgia, and Vancouver, Canada. (After reading what I just wrote, is it any wonder that I have an irrepressible desire to move around?) As I reflected on my latest meal in Rome, it suddenly occurred to me that the pasta sauce which has been handed from generation to generation down my paternal lineage is, in fact, vegan. Only, I'd never thought of it that way before.

If this is how my ancestors ate, I could seriously get used to it. I think I'm going to have to run some more intervals on the Spanish Steps tomorrow, or I'm going to unceremoniously sink in the Tuscan sea come September's swim start.

Staring at Things in Rome

It could be that it's off season, or it could be that people the world over are feeling mindful of their pocketbooks, but it appears that I've picked the best possible time to come to Rome. I've just wrapped up a day of walking (covering at least marathon distance), and I haven't seen one flag-bearing group tour guide, nor caught sight of a single garish tour bus. There was hardly a lineup at the Colosseum, and I stood on the floor of the pantheon, squinting up at the oculus, without being jostled once.

I started my day with a 10K run (best estimate) through the Villa Borghese, a public park filled with geometric shapes, cyprus and pine-lined boulevards, groves of olive and lemon and statues of men with their noses - and sometime heads - missing. At the far end of the park I cut down to the Spanish Steps, which I discovered are the perfect camber and length for running stair intervals. Roman architecture is truly genius.

Having showered and breakfasted on fruit and coffee (after the amount of pizza I ate yesterday - yes, I went back for seconds - this seemed like the most prudent choice), I headed out the door of the hotel with no particular idea of where I was going. I had made the decision to employ a particular tourism strategy that I have used on other first-time city visits. It involves not studying a map at all prior to arrival, asking for no advice or tips whatsoever from the hotel concierge, and then wandering out the front door to see what there is to see.

When used well, this technique results in the happy experience of discovering one's own version of the city in question, however I should note that it has produced varying results. When applied in French towns, for example, (with the exception of Paris and Toulouse) my mapless wanderings have invariably sent me hightailing it back in the direction I came from to seek the counsel of hotel staff and to get my hands on whatever printed paraphernalia they could offer. But Rome is different. It's difficult to find a street in Rome where there is not something to stop and stare at. You feel like you are getting lucky with every corner you turn, but then you realize: no, this is just Rome.

In between my walking, stopping and staring, I've been eating. A lot. Besides the ubiquitous vegan pizza, I've found an abundance of vegan-friendly antipasto platters (available to go!) and markets with a better selection of fresh fruit and vegetables at one stall than in all of Switzerland. I've also come to the realisation that any vegetable can be stuffed (all my life, I've been restricting my efforts to peppers): stuffed tomatoes, stuffed eggplants, stuffed zucchini and stuffed onions. And olives. Giant olives are everywhere; stuffed and unstuffed. Concerned about my protein intake, I've been snacking on roasted hazelnuts and roasted chestnuts, cooked on open hot coals at the road side by dark-skinned men who call me bella in non-Italian accents. Did I mention gelato? I stopped to (again) stare at the unbelievable selection of whipped extravaganzas in the display fridge of a back-alley gelateria, when I spotted two flavours marked soya. Whether or not I'd just been eating fig biscotti, this stuff simply had to be tried. So I ordered a singe scoop of the hazelnut variety and then ate it while wandering through the Campo dei Fiori, dying and going to heaven with every slow step. Tomorrow, I'm going back to try the chocolate.

Tonight, I am taking myself out for dinner and drinks in Piazza Navona. I think I'm going to leave Rome a fat vegan, but then I like to think that by being here, I'm doing my part to prop up a struggling tourism industry.

When in Rome

I just can't get enough of Italy, so this weekend I find myself in the eternal city of Rome. I've only been here a few hours, and already I'm in love. Besides the beautiful people, beautiful buildings and beautiful language, within an hour of arriving I fortuitously stumbled upon a by-the-slice pizza joint with no less than three vegan pizza options. Three. I had to pinch myself as I stared at the blatantly meat and cheese-free deep pan specimens, sitting there in broad daylight in the window of an otherwise unremarkable hole-in-wall pizza place. Three, out of a total of eight pizza choices. Then it dawned on me that it is really only the American version of pizza that has a mandatory layer of cheese. I suddenly felt very yankified in my assumptions; and felt even more so when I went inside and asked the well-set woman with a beautiful smile behind the counter to confirm that the crust did not contain any butter . She tisked at me before rejoining 'no no, signora, we only use olive oil!' (I almost leant across the counter to kiss her - must be the effect of being in Rome).

I ordered a slice, paid 1 euro (I almost kissed her again) and said grazie at least thirty times before leaving. I stood outside and ate it straight from the paper it was served on. A thousand Fiat Puntos and mopeds whizzed by, every second one exercising the Italian driving motto 'have horn, and am not afraid to use it'. But I was in another world; no knife, no fork, no cheese, no meat, and no special orders required. The option I selected had a basic tomato sauce topped with an assortment of vegetables and herbs, but most distinctly, it had whole cherry tomatoes baked into the crust. They were baked right in there! And they were like tiny explosions of sunshine in every bite. The base had that familiar pizza greasiness to it, but it was olive oil greasy, not cheese greasy. A much more sophisticated pizza experience; especially when I did the unthinkable and licked every one of my fingers to wrap it up.

Besides feeling a touch of shame for not being better acquainted with real Italian sustenance (this is, after all, half my pedigree, and besides, I recently read that the Italians have the lowest per capita meat consumption in Europe - and one of the longest life expectancies, in spite of their insistence on smoking and teetering around on suicidal stilettos), my first food experience in Rome has left me flushed with excitement at the dining possibilities this city could hold for me. I just might be able to exercise an Italian motto of my own over the next few days:

When in Rome...

Swiss Secrets

Switzerland is a country of many secrets. It's a good country to take up residence in if you wish to live somewhere where people mind their own business. It's a good country to come to if you wish to mind your own. This is part of the reason, I imagine, that Phil Collins, Shania Twain, Ingvar Kamprad and Michael Schuhmacher are our quasi-neighbours. If I were a celebrity or a high net worth individual, this is where I would choose to set up house in the twilight of my spotlight years, too. It's also not a bad place to come if you have a few billion dollars to bank, or if you have, say, $648 million in pillaged gold that you would like to stash somewhere, no questions asked.

It's a country of many secrets.

I just returned from a long ride with my friend and new riding buddy, Amy. The sun was out, sort of, and the temperatures were hovering just above freezing. Amy's an American, brought here by a husband's Nestle job. She also happens to be an x-semi-professional cross-country rider, so while I just about manage to keep up to her on the flats, she leaves me in the dust on the hills. We rode through the farmlands today, looking for trails that lead into the patches of forest that punctuate the fields and that might bring relief from trying to keep traction on soft-packed snow cover. No matter how many times I ride through these fields and forests, there always seems to be new passages to explore; secret trails that are not marked on maps and, most uncharacteristically, are without signage. Sometimes they lead nowhere in particular, and today we found ourselves dismounting more than once to push our bikes as the undergrowth thickened and the trail disappeared without warning.

On the flats, we kvetched about the mysterious and varying opening hours of Swiss shops and businesses (one of my favorite topics), how to decipher what documentation is required when renewing one's residence permit (it's simple: you just keep going back and each time they will tell you that you are missing something, until one day you will arrive with everything required), and the inexplicably exorbitant price of a jar of organic almond butter. Sometimes, it's good to have company in these things; it makes me feel like I'm not the only one who feels left out of a few secrets.

As per my newly employed Ironman schedule, I arrived home after 2.5 hours in the saddle and exchanged my shammy for running shoes. I was just about to leave for my run when something new and interesting happened: a rather bone-chilling and not-so-distant siren came piercing through the air. Unable to identify the source of this impolite interruption, I went to the patio doors, with a curious what-are-the-Swiss-up-to-now frame of mind, and opened them. It was then that I appreciated our highly efficient double glazing, and took several involuntary steps backward as the mega-decibel sound boomed into the living room. I quickly closed the doors and did what I always do when I don't know what's happening in Switzerland; I sent an email to Michael at work, asking him to ask Francois.

Francois has brought us into the confidence of many Swiss secrets. My favourite came last August when things had suddenly became eerily silent in our little village. The shops and restaurants were closed, and the streets deserted. The outdoor pool was open, but I was the only one swimming in it, stopping after every few lengths to look around me with an increasingly uneasy feeling. After about a week of wondering, I finally asked Francois, 'Francois, where did all the people go?'

Francois, cheerfully: 'Into the mountains, of course!"

He went on to explain that everybody, and I mean everybody, in Switzerland heads into the mountains in the month of August. Why one would want to escape to the mountains when everyone else is there is beyond me, but in any event, I persisted with my line of questioning:

'When will they come back?'

Francois, again cheerfully: 'Next month!'

I wished somebody had told me; I might have stocked up on some groceries had I known I was going to be left behind in an evacuation.

Unfortunately, Francois was not available for my questions today. Thank goodness Google was; and I managed to find an explanation as the third deafening round of wailing bellowed out from the heavens, reverberated across the lake and echoed back from the mountains. My online sources informed me that on the first Wednesday of February every year, Switzerland tests it's civil defense sirens. That makes good sense, for a country that has not been in an official foreign war since 1515 (if the country was at war, and if I were granted citizenship - two equally improbable events - I would be relieved from military duty on account of my diet. Yes, Switzerland has a law against vegans serving in the military).

The knowledge that nothing was seriously amiss brought some relief, but still made me feel a little on edge as I headed out the door, determined to get my run in no matter what day in February it was. I turned my MP3 player up in an attempt to mask the shrill sounds that accented my run, but combined with John Mayer's somber voice, this only made for a somewhat bizarre and distorted doomsday soundtrack as my route wound through the vineyards, the backdrop of which reminded me of another Swiss secret.

In the 1960's, Switzerland passed a law requiring space in a nuclear shelter for every single resident. By 1991, the project was complete, meaning that there are now bunkers under virtually every hill and free-standing building across this quiet little nation. I suppose it's comforting to know that I am never more than a few minutes from a fallout shelter with an air filter, should it be determined that a ballistic missile is headed in this general direction. Our friends who own homes have shown us their bunkers in the basement; obscure concrete-reinforced rooms with stacks of bottled water and blankets in a corner. Our own picturesque village of Chexbres, nestled amongst the terraced vineyards, has bunkers built into the rock beneath it. I have yet to find the doorways (and I've looked), but I've heard that the illegal migrant workers who are brought in to harvest the grapes in September are housed in them.

These are the things that are only whispered about in Switzerland.

The Road to Aosta

I'm on a bus to Italy; a day trip to the medieval mountain town of Aosta. I'm with a group of ex-pat companions. The town of Aosta is nestled in a valley of the same name, between the slopes of Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn, and is home to the Fiera di Sant'Orso: a two-day annual festival displaying the local craftsmanship that this valley is known for: objects carved in wood.

Our diesel bus climbs, switchback after endless switchback. The flatroofed houses of the Rhone valley floor give way to clusters of dark timber chalets, every room with a view. We pass tiny churches inexplicably built in isolation at the roadside, their roofs holding up impossible stacks of snow while icicles that are taller then me hang from their eaves. Houses of worship, literally frozen in time.

In the summer months, the road from Switzerland to Aosta leads over the great St. Bernard pass, the most ancient Alpine pass and the route used by Napoleon and his army of 40,000 to advance into Italy in 1800. Between September and June, when snows block the pass, the route diverts through a 5.6 kilometer ear-popping tunnel below it; a thoroughfare through the heart of the mountain that spits vehicles out into Italy on the other side. The need for the tunnel decreases with every passing year: snow depth in the Alps is expected to decrease by 20-30% by 2020. Climate specialists at nearby University of Fribourg estimate that the Alps have lost half their glacier ice in the past century. Glaciers in Switzerland have lost a fifth of their surface area in the past 15 years. When my children drive this route on an overcast Sunday in February, they might turn to their children in the back seat and tell them how, not so long ago, snow covered these mountains, making passage on the high road impossible in the winter months. The children will try to imagine.

We emerge on the other side of the tunnel, and are suddenly and unmistakably in Italy. The neat rows of Swiss chalets are replaced by clutches of disorderly houses, seemingly built without plan into the mountainside, their stone walls and shingled roofs sitting at angles that have surely shifted over time. The road feels a little bumpier and the faces of the people seem a little more expressive from the bus window. They use their hands more when they talk. They smile more, I think, as we sit in a minor traffic jam that we have created by trying to squeeze our fat bus through a village's narrow streets.

Today is a day off from training for me, but not a day off from being vegan. I'm armed with sandwiches: one roasted vegetable with pesto spread, the other my faithful standby of peanut butter with apple slices. I'm thinking about something I fretted over for months when I began to realize that I wanted to stop eating animal products. My concern was this: that if I denied myself the opportunity to eat bree in Lyon and salami in Milan, I would be missing out; missing out on that complete, all-senses-engaged submersion into the rich tapestry of cultures and cuisines that patterns continental Europe. One voice argued that the upcoming year was not the right time to do this, and the other argued that for some decisions in life, there is never a right time.

I'm staring out the bus window, wondering if I am going to miss out on fully experiencing Aosta today.

When we arrive in the town, it's clear that we are not the only ones who decided to come. The narrow streets act as funnels for thousands of people - mostly Italians - who are here to shop and talk loudly to one another. I don't know how the town is coping; it's in an otherwise sparsely populated area of the Alps; the weather here is too severe and the mountain slopes too steep for ski resorts. The streets are so packed that we are all shoulder-to-shoulder, but still everybody is using their hands. The whole town is a marketplace; there are literally thousands of wood carvings on display, stall after stall of the Virgin Mary standing next to mountain gnomes or pepper grinders. The men and women who carved them stand next to their work, their own faces etched with the deep lines of time and mountain air. Everybody has eyes that are dark and bright at the same time.

We find somewhere to have lunch, and it turns out that I didn't need my sandwiches. I have a hearty salad with tomatoes, zucchini, olives and polenta. We drink a bottle of local red between three, and finish with black coffee. Everybody is drinking black coffee; and I realize that I acquired the taste when I wasn't looking.

Other than a sunflower-yellow jug that made me smile when I saw it in a window, I somehow manage to buy nothing but food items. I'm bringing back a large pouch of dried mushrooms that I'm not sure how to cook and strips of pasta that are all the colours of the rainbow (the red comes from wine pigment, the green from asparagus, the yellow from saffron, and the blue has no simple English translation, the girl tells me). I buy my first bottle of unfiltered olive oil: the top is a clear and brilliant green, like stained glass, the bottom is so cloudy it looks like a clotted cream suspension. On the way back to the bus, I make one last stop at an artisan chocolatier. I find a medley of different dark chocolates to choose from, and the woman who serves me confirms there is no milk in it. She should know, she made it.

It's twilight when the diesel bus heads out of town, and I feel a touch of nausea as we begin to climb back up the switchbacks. I either ate too much chocolate or sampled too much grappa. Either way, I feel like I missed out on nothing today.